The Shelly vs. Donald Sterling battle over Clippers unfolds in court

With the potentially record-breaking $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers hanging in the balance, a trial beginning Monday, July 7, 2014 will focus on whether Shelly Sterling had the authority under terms of a family trust to unilaterally negotiate the deal. (File photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)

After weeks of legal wrangling, the showdown between Donald and Shelly Sterling finally started Monday, though with the absence of its key figure.

As the trial opened in Los Angeles Superior Court after being delayed all morning, Shelly Sterling’s attorney Pierce O’Donnell stood up, scanned the courtroom, and called Donald Sterling as his first witness.

Silence. He was not present.

O’Donnell said that Donald Sterling’s attorney, Maxwell Blecher, had accepted a subpoena on his behalf citing an email in which Blecher wrote, “You don’t have to serve him. I’ll accept.”

O’Donnell then suggested that Judge Michael Levanas issue a bench warrant for Donald Sterling. Instead he ordered a short recess and Sterling’s attorney later said his client would be in the courtroom this afternoon.

The case in probate court will decide ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers and could determine whether Shelly Sterling has the right to sell the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion. Shelly and her attorneys have argued that Donald is mentally incapacitated, meaning she can assert sole control over the family trust that owns the team.

Donald Sterling’s attorneys had tried to get the case moved to federal court, over claims that the release of his medical records was a violation of federal medical privacy laws, but U.S. District Judge George H. Wu rejected the effort and sent it back to Los Angeles Superior Court.

Donald Sterling is scheduled to testify at 2:30 p.m. today. His attorney Gary Ruttenberg called the attempt to summon him to the stand Monday as “gamesmanship”; that is, Shelly Sterling’s attorneys only did so because they knew Donald wasn’t in the courtroom.

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In Donald Sterling’s absence, the trial proceeded with testimony from Dr. Meril Platzer, one of the two neurologists who declared Sterling mentally incapacitated.

On the stand, Platzer said she diagnosed Sterling with Alzheimer’s disease through a PET scan and a two-hour, in-home examination.

Platzer testified she went to dinner with Shelly Sterling at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but that Donald Sterling and his attorney Bobby Samini and another friend sat down uninvited. Platzer said that she drank half a glass of wine, and brought up her divorce to empathize with Samini, who had first talked about his.

Outside the courthouse later, O’Donnell called the first day “a singular victory for Shelly, Steve Ballmer, and the cause of selling the Clippers for a record $2 billion.” Samini called Platzer’s testimony “flawed and inaccurate,” but said he would save details for Tuesday’s cross-examination.

Dressed in a dark black suit, Shelly Sterling herself arrived Monday morning for the scheduled court proceedings, but left the courthouse after Levanas announced a delay in the case. Flanked by a member of her public relations team, Donald Sterling’s wife of more than five decades did not speak to reporters as she exited the building.

O’Donnell argued that Shelly Sterling followed the terms of the Sterling Family Trust by having two doctors declare her husband mentally incapacitated, opening up the path for her to become sole trustee and sell the Clippers to Ballmer.

Ruttenberg argued that his client’s doctor-patient privacy rights under HIPAA — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 — were violated by Shelly Sterling and her attorneys, suggesting that any doctor testimonies would be “the fruits of a very poisonous tree.”

He accused Shelly Sterling and her attorneys of colluding with the NBA in order to oust Donald Sterling, and argued that Shelly Sterling did not have authority to sell the Clippers — only to discuss terms of the sale.

But it was something else Ruttenberg said early in his 30-minute opening statement that perhaps summed up the day best: “This case reads like a Hollywood soap opera. I call it the tale of two Sterlings.”